TEIJI HAYAMA
Ethereal Icons at GR Gallery New York
The incredibly creative and unique Japanese painter Teiji Hayama’s creations are on display at GR Gallery in New York in the show Ethereal Icons. It is the artist’s first solo exhibition with this gallery. Hayama’s works consist of oil paintings depicting distorted images of popular vintage icons (generally from movies, music, and popular culture) with all their glamour but with a contemporary vision. The show features sixteen of his newer works.
Hayama was born in Japan in 1975. At 18, he moved to the UK and graduated from Central Saint Martins’ College of Art & Design (London) in 1998. He currently lives and works in Switzerland. He has exhibited in galleries and art fairs worldwide, including Germany, Singapore, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Chicago, and his exhibition Fame at Unit London in 2020.
His paintings’ color palette consists mainly of grays, and the texture of his portraits creates the illusion of magazine or newspaper cutouts with a kaleidoscopic distortion. His subjects (which commonly include old glamorous Hollywood celebrities) have fatigued and bored facial expressions (think of an unhappy, non-smiling Marilyn Monroe, a grumpy Twiggy, or a sad Stormtrooper) with elongated, slim bodies. Their mannerisms and poses transform these famous figures from the 1960s into old-fashioned “influencers,” alluding to how social media fatigue has taken over our lives. His images are reminiscent of favorite Pop Art artists such as Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein. Hayama’s works also feature celebrities and pop icons like the Coca-Cola logo, bananas, or telephones. A work that specifically stood out to me was one Million Dots Twiggy (2020), where the English 60s supermodel Twiggy is next to a dented can of Coca-Cola. The model’s pose mirrors that of the inanimate object, creating a very balanced mood.
GR gallery released a statement saying that: “Hayama’s paintings appear like a time-lapse hallucination, a sort of déjà vu linked to glamorous and notorious imagery that everybody can relate to. The familiarity of this world is discredited by anamorphic overviews, decontextualized objects, and a shifty color palette.” Also, “the esthetic disconnection from the original characters and symbols is although somehow compensated by a more digital, hyper-technological and hip approach that re-investigates the subjects in a new realm, closer to the current one and uses their allure to criticize its aberrations.”
It’s the artist’s first solo show at GR gallery, although he has collaborated with them in the past. It can be viewed at the gallery in New York City or virtually (the website provides a link to the excellent online 3D virtual walk-through tour.) A limited-edition print signed and numbered by the artist will also be released the second week of the exhibition. Ethereal Icons runs from January 15th through February 13th, 2021, and should be a unique and fantastic experience for fans of Pop Art and contemporary art.
